I would like to comment on the recent postings on this thread,
particularly from the two Peters.
First of all, Peter S. is right. The fully wired and Netted society is
very far down the line, if indeed it will ever happen. Computers cost
money - sometimes much more than families in our increasingly polarized
society can afford - and the kids who need them most will be the kids
least likely to get them. It is also not true that every classroom will
have computers by the year 2000. Depressed urban (and many rural) school
districts can't afford to buy computers or software in the first place,
much less keep them in operating condition. I live in the Kensington
neighborhood in Brooklyn, and I can tell you that very few of the
immigrant families on my street (which seems to be 80% immigrant and a
little like the UN) have computers for their kids to play with. (In any
case, people with extra money will probably buy a VCR first, simply
because it's easier to understand and use.)
Don't tell me about colleges, either. Brooklyn College allegedly
has enough computers in its labs so that all students can have free
access to one. Don't believe it. And don't believe that even when s/he
gets to the computer that anyone has taught her/him how to use it. As an
undergrad I waited - and sometimes gave up and went home - for extended
periods to get a terminal, and that was *before* the budget cuts. The
undergrads I taught in the doctoral program were sometimes computer
literate and sometimes not - but they still had that wait, and sometimes
also gave up and went home and forgot to come back.
Bottom line: Peter M. had better start working on his plans for
more FTF interaction, because the equal distribution of the electronic
kind is not yet in sight.
I don't mean to "dis" the Net. It has made a big difference in my life
both academically and personally, and I think it should be developed to
its fullest extent under the technology we have - and we should meet each
opportunity as new technology is developed.
I also think it should be used, when possible, to seriously erode, if not
break outright, the elitist attitudes that prevail in so many parts of
Academia. I went back to college late and graduated at 47. I am now in
a grad program where I am the same age as many of the faculty, and I am
getting a sort of frog's eye view of the world - half of my vision is
below water in the world of the students, most of whom are between 22 and
35, and half above it in the adult world of the faculty, who are my age.
The types of condescension and patronization that I hear, not only in
regard to the student body but to the society that is paying everybody's
salary, have left me - shall we say - aghast. Perhaps we need a few real
ivory towers, but I think that the majority of colleges and universities
should be forced to take responsibility for the communities they are
situated in and for the society at large.
A first step toward this would be to break the credentials
barrier that Peter M. talks about. The idea of the junior college was a
good first step, and it should be extended. Perhaps credentialization is
driven by the competition in the job market, but the best solution for
*society* may be to create more low-level jobs with fewer hurdles to
jump. It makes no sense to train someone in all the latest details of
teaching reading and then send them to a school system which can't keep
the rats out of the coatrooms. Instead of training five high-level
people, train a dozen to meet the challenges that are immediately out
there, and have one highly trained person supervising and passing on
their expertise to the others on the job. You can explain the concept of
"zoped" to a bright ten year old, who has probably been using it all
along playing with his/her younger siblings, but you had better be
prepared for a quizzical "Is that all psychologists do? My mother knows
that!" And probably she does. She just doesn't have the technical
vocabulary to tell you about it.
Sometimes we confuse knowing how to use our technical jargon with knowing
how to use the processes and ideas that we name with them. Let's
concentrate on teaching the processes to anyone we can grab, and worry
about validating their expertise with the terminology until after our
society is functioning a little better.
Whew! That was a long two cents' worth! Now I have to go back to
writing the final that someone else will complain about grading at
probably the same volume that I complained about writing :-).
Regards to all,
Rachel Heckert